Valentina di Giorgio
(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 19.12.2022).- Pope Francis granted an extensive interview to the Spanish newspaper ABC. The interview was published on Sunday, December 18.
Among the many and varied subjects addressed during the interview was his relationship with the Personal Prelature of the Opus Dei. The context of two questions was the dispositions that the Pope ordered with a Motu Proprio made public on July were the first steps taken by the Opus Dei: the Extraordinary General Congress. Those steps were communicated subsequently to the Pope in an audience granted to Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz.
Since the publication of the Pope’s Motu Proprio, many voices presented the Document as a form of punishment of the Opus Dei, but the Pope came personally to clarify the matter. When ABC asked him how the changes requested from the Work should be interpreted, the Pope answered:
“It’s not only a question of the Opus Dei, but of Personal Prelatures. In the Curia’s scheme, the Opus Dei depended on the Congregation for Bishops, but in the Code of Canon Law, the Prelatures are framed in another way, and the criteria had to be unified. The matter was studied and it was said ”that the Prelature should go to the Congregation for the Clergy.” I did it talking it over with them. Moreover, I’m a friend from Argentina of Mariano Fazio (Vicar General of the Opus Dei). The issue was serene and normal, carried out by canonists, even canonists of the Opus worked on the process.”
And when the interviewers said that the decision had a great echo, the Holy Father pointed out:
“ And on one hand, some said ”Finally the Pope let those of the Opus have it . . .!” I didn’t give them anything! And, on the other hand, others said ”Ah, the Pope is invading us!” It was none of that. The measure is about a relocation that had to be resolved. It’s not right to magnify the matter, or to make them victims, or to make them culprits who received punishments. Please, I’m a very close friend of the Opus Dei, I love them a lot and they work well in the Church. The good they do is very great.”
The Pope’s statements show that many opinions expressed in venues, commentaries, columns and articles about enmity and even a form of “progressive” punishment against a “conservative organization” were — and are — very far from the reality and from the Pope’s mind.
